1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital video signal processing apparatus. More particularly, the present invention relates to a digital video signal processing apparatus and method for field-based adaptive spatio-temporal, i.e., 3-dimensional (3D), Y/C separation in NTSC/PAL (National Television System Committee/Phase Alternation by Line) systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
The display of an NTSC/PAL broadcasting system includes a device for processing a CVBS (Composite Video Blanking Sync) signal, which is a composite of a Y (luminance) signal and a C (chrominance) signal. The C signal is quadrature-amplitude-modulated with a subcarrier frequency fsc. Thus, characteristics of the C signal are determined by its frequency and phase. A digital video signal processing apparatus at a receiving stage separates Y and C signals with reference to the characteristic of the C signal and displays an image based on the separated signals.
FIG. 1 illustrates a block diagram of a conventional video signal processing apparatus 100. Referring to FIG. 1, the video signal processing apparatus 100 includes a comb filter 110, a one-dimensional bandpass filter (1D-BPF) 120, a weight determination unit 130, a combiner 140 and a subtracter 150. The comb filter 110 one-dimensionally band-pass-filters an input video signal in the vertical direction. The 1D-BPF 120 one-dimensionally band-pass-filters the input video signal in the horizontal direction. The weight determination unit 130 determines weights of the output of the comb filter 110 and the output of the 1D-BPF 120 with reference to vertical/horizontal correlation and the phase of a C signal. The combiner 140 combines the output signals of the comb filter 110 and 1D-BPF 120 using the weights to generate a C signal. The subtracter 150 subtracts the C signal from the input CVBS signal to generate a Y signal.
FIG. 2 illustrates a block diagram of another conventional video signal processing apparatus 200. Referring to FIG. 2, the video signal processing apparatus 200 includes a 2D-BPF 210, a subtracter 220 and a post-processor 230. The 2D-BPF 210 performs a two-dimensional convolution to extract a modulated C signal. The extracted C signal and a Y signal generated by the subtracter 220 are processed by the post-processor 230. When the 2D-BPF 210 carries out Y/C separation incorrectly, the post-processor 230 compensates the Y/C signal to generate a compensated Y/C signal.
In conventional Y/C separation techniques, when the edge of a detected image has high vertical correlation, Y/C separation is performed based on comb filtering and when the edge of a detected image has high horizontal correlation, Y/C separation is performed based on 1D bandpass filtering. As described above, when selecting one of these filtering methods according to a conventional Y/C separation technique, system performance largely depends on a threshold used for edge detection. That is, Y/C separation can be executed incorrectly or unstably when the filtering method is wrongly selected due to inaccurate edge detection. Conventional techniques that do not select one of the filtering methods but combine the results of the filtering operations can solve this problem to some extent. However, these techniques are based on horizontal or vertical one-dimensional filtering, and thus, artifacts may remain in the generated signal due to the inconstant edge directions.
In other words, when the direction in which the edge of an image extends is not uniform, cross-luma, which occurs when a C component exists in the separated Y signal, resulting in dotted artifacts, and cross-color, which occurs when a Y component exists in the separated C signal, resulting in a rainbow pattern artifact, can appear on a displayed image when Y/C separation is not properly performed by comb filtering or 1D bandpass filtering selected discretely.
To improve spatial filtering, spatio-temporal filtering is used by conventional video signal processing apparatuses. In this case, when processing a current pixel, the correlations of pixel data of the previous field and pixel data of the next field with the current pixel or the correlations of pixel data of the previous frame and pixel data of the next frame with the current pixel is considered. The spatio-temporal filtering method requires a memory for storing the pixel data of the previous and next fields or frames. Although the spatio-temporal filter is more expensive than the spatial filter, the spatio-temporal filtering technique is frequently used when images with high picture quality are required.
However, conventional Y/C separation techniques, which discontinuously select the spatial filter and the spatio-temporal filter in response to inter-frame/intra-frame correlation of the CVBS signal, cause artifacts such as cross-luma and cross-color when there is an error in the correlation measurement result. In addition, the conventional techniques have limitations in two-dimensional spatial Y/C separation. Furthermore, conventional Y/C separation techniques using intra-frame correlation have an advantage of using pixel data from the same spatial location. However, these techniques use data before and after one frame temporally distant by more than one field, resulting in deterioration of the spectrum characteristics of filters.